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"Games won't get better than this!"

Started by Kelvin, April 01, 2018, 03:25:26 PM

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biggytitbo

I think N64 and PS1/Saturn 3D games look equally awful today, it just depends whether you prefer incredibly blurry muddy looking games or incredibly blocky games with hideous texture warping. Arguably the Saturn's big library of excellent looking 2D games make it stand up best overall, but that whole generation arguably holds up the worst in all retro gaming, not just graphically but in terms of the controls of the 3d games being so embryonic and botched.

Sebastian Cobb

Saturn had some good arcade shooters IIRC. Die Hard trilogy was better on it than the psx if I recall.

Phil_A

Quote from: popcorn on April 02, 2018, 05:13:08 PM
Yes. HL2 wasn't the first game to have a physics system as know them today, and billions of games have technically superior physics engines today.

But it remains the only game of its type to actually make them the core of its design. It uses physics to holistically integrate lots of different elements - you catch a grenade and throw it back using exactly the same system you place a crate or push a car. It's a design triumph.


Uh, Portal. I know it was the same developers(possibly the same engine), but it is just that.

popcorn

Quote from: Phil_A on April 02, 2018, 06:59:15 PM
Uh, Portal. I know it was the same developers(possibly the same engine), but it is just that.

Nope. Portal is in a separate category - it's much simpler in terms of how you interact with the world. You don't need to do the stuff that Gordon Freeman (or Lara Croft, or Nathan Drake, etc) does.

greenman

Quote from: popcorn on April 02, 2018, 06:19:52 AM
I still think in many ways Half-Life 2 hasn't been bettered.

No game of its type (AAA linear story thing) has matched its unified theory of everything. In Uncharted 4, you're constantly going around interacting with things by pressing X to trigger some bespoke sequence. In Half-Life 2, you fucking do it yourself, using the physics system. You overturn a bathtub to find a battery or remove a barricade from a door or clear a road of cars all using the same integrated bunch of rules. It's "real". It should have set a design standard, but no one has matched it since.

I'd guess perhaps a comment of gaming generally? HL2 arguably coming just before the period where dumbing down for an increasing broad market started to be a major factor.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I have never thought graphics will never look as good as this because I was aware early on of the concept of time and the concept of technological development.

However the most impressed I remember being was of screenshots of the first Gran Turismo which looked so dramatically better than most PS1 games, but half of it was really just nailing cinematics - camera angles and reflections. The models themselves were still a bit crap.

Most of all the first Splinter Cell on Xbox, the lighting effects alone rendered the console capable of doing more gameplay wise than the PS2. Though the character model was only yeah ok, the design of the first few levels speaks to the palpable excitement of the development staff. Everything is crafted around the light, and a great sense of tension is established. The sequels never managed to match that.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: popcorn on April 02, 2018, 05:13:08 PM
Yes. HL2 wasn't the first game to have a physics system as know them today, and billions of games have technically superior physics engines today.

But it remains the only game of its type to actually make them the core of its design. It uses physics to holistically integrate lots of different elements - you catch a grenade and throw it back using exactly the same system you place a crate or push a car. It's a design triumph.

Been over a decade and nothing has matched it. Bioshock and Dead Space have gravity gun-style tools, but are only used for occasional, specific puzzle solving. Uncharted still uses "press triangle to enter a bespoke pushing-object-mode for this particular kind of object" design.

A Deus Ex sequel did that by the way, just saying.

Shay Chaise

As technical development slows, and leaps forward become baby step shuffles, will we ever be blown away by graphics in the same way again?

PSVR is the last thing which really made my jaw drop but it also sent me into a nauseous sweating existential malaise, so there's that.

Kelvin

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on April 03, 2018, 07:24:26 AM
I have never thought graphics will never look as good as this because I was aware early on of the concept of time and the concept of technological development

Now you've been a bit naughty there, Shoulders. I'm sure none of us literally thought graphics wouldn't get better. It's more about those rare moments when something looked impossibly good compared to what we were used to, or where you couldn't necessarily imagine how something could be significantly improved upon.

I mean, you can look at a game like Horizen and think 'that looks amazing, how much further can graphics get pushed?', then you look at even relatively early film CGI and think, 'oh right, miles.'

Zetetic

Life is Strange pretty much nailed verisimilitude in its dialogue for me, but then all these old people told me I was wrong :(((


bgmnts

The way the characters spoke in Life is Strange made me want them all to die.

popcorn

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on April 03, 2018, 07:30:40 AM
A Deus Ex sequel did that by the way, just saying.

Nope. All the Deus Ex games still require several exterior systems to work independently. No game in the same space has unified level design, world interaction, combat, puzzle solving etc so elegantly.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: popcorn on April 03, 2018, 08:14:56 AM
Nope. All the Deus Ex games still require several exterior systems to work independently. No game in the same space has unified level design, world interaction, combat, puzzle solving etc so elegantly.

You weren't asserting 'elegance'. Deus Ex had a physics engine where you used it to solve puzzles, assist in combat, and integrated it well. Whether it did so as well as Half Life is not relevant to your initial assertion

popcorn

#74
My initial assertion was:

Quote from: popcorn on April 02, 2018, 06:19:52 AM
I still think in many ways Half-Life 2 hasn't been bettered.

No game of its type (AAA linear story thing) has matched its unified theory of everything. In Uncharted 4, you're constantly going around interacting with things by pressing X to trigger some bespoke sequence. In Half-Life 2, you fucking do it yourself, using the physics system. You overturn a bathtub to find a battery or remove a barricade from a door or clear a road of cars all using the same integrated bunch of rules. It's "real". It should have set a design standard, but no one has matched it since.

Shay Chaise

I'm just going to butt into this thread to say it's interesting how there's a load of discussion about games fifteen or twenty years old but threads on new releases are DOA.

Do most folk not play newer games, perhaps? Apologies for the meta/state of the boards, I've been thinking about it for a while though.

popcorn

#76
(edit: wrote this on my phone initially and did a shit job of it, rewrote it so it makes more sense hopefully)

The last thing that really amazed me in games was the writing in The Last of Us. Finally here was a game with acting and characterisation and so on to match the quality of an HBO season. It's weird because it followed about a decade of arguments about story in video games and what the interactive element meant for narrative, and TLU just blew everyone away by having a good script and good actors, like movies and TV had been doing for decades.

The lesbian stuff in the DLC also really impressed me and felt like a significant step for games. Lots of indie games have dealt with LGBT stuff but it's all a bit trite and Tumblry, and besides being in a huge AAA thing was very cheering.

But the Last of Us story is still largely external to the business of the gameplay itself... in terms of integrating story with design, I think, again, HL2 remains the king. The HL2 plot itself is pretty hackneyed and I don't actually care about any of its characters - but in terms of the minute by minute experience of being drawn through a world, from a level design and narrative design perspective, unbeaten.

Zetetic

TLU has had a lot of criticism for how disconnected gameplay is from the story - it's not completely broken but it's not far off. I don't think it contributed much to those arguments other than "alright movie + third person shooter is reasonably entertaining". (That's a bit unfair on it.)

(Also the ending is so perfunctorily cackhanded it's hard to really hold the writing up as a whole.)

bgmnts

Why does cinematic or like a tv or film a positive in a video game?

Games should be their own thing no?

Shay Chaise

Totally agree but it gets the shit munchers on board and people who are desperate to justify their hobby to shit munchers.

Zetetic

^^ Yes, but given how awful "their own thing" has often been when attempting to tell a story, sticking a tolerable film in there around the gameplay still seems like an achievement in the context of big budget games with prominent narratives.

(I've tried to couch that carefully - not all games have to try to "tell a story", but many try to if only because they feel it's necessary window dressing and in doing so often tell horrible stupid stories badly.)

Jerzy Bondov

I could not believe my eyes when I first played Mario 64. Just the smoothness of the movement in that game. I was well aware that the graphics were fairly simple, but it just felt real. The world had a sense of weight to it I hadn't seen before.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Silent Hill 2 is still the highpoint for gameplay and story integration that I've played. Plenty of games offer branching storylines, but they're usually just based on making a binary choice at a given point, which is really no more complicated than one of those choose your own adventure books. For all I know, Silent Hill 2's coding might not be all that complicated, but the way your playstyle influences the ending is unique to games. It is the abyss, looking back at you.

Quote from: Shay Chaise on April 03, 2018, 08:36:00 AM
Do most folk not play newer games, perhaps? Apologies for the meta/state of the boards, I've been thinking about it for a while though.
I don't, because new games are blinking expensive. I generally have to wait a year before the price drops to a sensible level.

ASFTSN

Quote from: Shay Chaise on April 03, 2018, 08:36:00 AM
Do most folk not play newer games, perhaps? Apologies for the meta/state of the boards, I've been thinking about it for a while though.

Thoughts on graphics, specifically:

For my part, I'll be honest and say that the thing that most gets me interested in new games is the way screenshots look, and almost everything from big studios coming out these days looks too 'real' for me to be interested.  This is the sort of thing most people assume is graphics hipsterism and causes countless boring arguments on part of the internet I don't frequent.

I think old 90's CRPGs or arcade games like Metal Slug are some of the most beautiful looking games because I like the colour palettes and simple, pleasing iconography of symbols for items and enemies etc.  They're just well-designed games (visually) and I think that gets lost in all the open world stuff.  When I think of AAA titles generally I just think of a big mass of visual bleh stretching on for miles. 

Leaving aside nice looking indie games like Anodyne or Darkest Dungeon, Bloodborne is the sort of thing that's an exception, real attempt to make a visual and auditory experience that's not attempting to be cinematic, it's creating a world.

Shay Chaise

We're on exactly the same page here. Thanks for the interesting post.

ASFTSN

Quote from: Shay Chaise on April 03, 2018, 11:57:14 AM
We're on exactly the same page here. Thanks for the interesting post.

High five!

To answer the OP one game I can think of here I've iscussed with some mates recently is Final Fantasy VIII.  Didn't enjoy the game, but remember thinking "They've cracked it, the interactive film has been done!  It can never get better than that." 

Looking back it must partially have been the difference in look to the previous game that made me thing that.

Kelvin

Quote from: Shay Chaise on April 03, 2018, 08:36:00 AM
I'm just going to butt into this thread to say it's interesting how there's a load of discussion about games fifteen or twenty years old but threads on new releases are DOA.

Do most folk not play newer games, perhaps? Apologies for the meta/state of the boards, I've been thinking about it for a while though.

I think the problem is that there's just a limited pool of gamers all split across different consoles, and when a thread gets started on a game - especially a relatively obscure one - there just aren't the numbers to sustain it. Bigger, more high profile games have a chance and threads like this, which span all era's and all consoles have a chance because there's a bigger pool of people to draw from.

Benevolent Despot

Re; Half-Life 2, graphics wise, I actually remember first seeing it running on someone else's PC where they were walking Gordon up a stairwell. I was so impressed by the fine texture detail on the brickwork etc. I said "wow". This person then said "What? I'm just walking up a stairwell". That's when I realised that some PCs are better than others.

Possibly some older games looked so good 'coz they were on low-res CRT monitors and TVs. Layed plain in the digital clarity of an HD monitor fed by flawless HDMI, the edges come out.

Quote from: Z on April 02, 2018, 02:24:19 PM
That 98 jurassic park game has been getting mentioned a lot around me lately. Is it something worth checking out as a curio?

Yeah, check it out I say. I haven't played it for years so it may be too slow for modern tastes. Having tried VR it reminds me of that, except you use the mouse to control your arm instead of your arm to control your arm. So therefore it's pretty hard to actually shoot anything. It's a rather crazy design choice but I suppose you could say it's their attempt to create a holistic physics world. You have completely manual aim - as well as looking towards your target you have to orient your hand so that the gun is pointed in the right direction (no reticle). Add this to wobble from the character moving, wobble from kickback, wobble from being attacked by dinos, getting the gun knocked out of your hand... it's challenging.

Aside from that the physics puzzles are pretty good, the voice work is good and the environments / atmosphere are grade-A Jurassic Park. I suppose with the control scheme, like VR it really does feel like you're there. Also your health meter is a tattoo on your boobs. Look down to see. A nice touch.

Ferris

Ok, one for this thread in 20 years.

What's the game you think has the best looking graphics from the last year or 2? And at what point do graphics get pointlessly better?

Bhazor

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on April 03, 2018, 11:14:39 AM
I could not believe my eyes when I first played Mario 64. Just the smoothness of the movement in that game. I was well aware that the graphics were fairly simple, but it just felt real. The world had a sense of weight to it I hadn't seen before.

Exactly. There were 3D platformer on the Playstation that looked way better than Mario 64 like Croc and Crash Bandicoot. But in terms of game feel Mario 64 is in a whole other galaxy.